United States v. Watts

United States District Court, S.D. Illinois

January 19, 2017

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff,v.JAMES NATHANIEL WATTS, Defendant.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

J.
PHIL GILBERT DISTRICT JUDGE

This
matter comes before the Court on defendant James Nathaniel
Watts's motion to dismiss the Indictment due to the
systematic exclusion of African-Americans from the grand jury
venire and to the violation of the Jury Plan for the Southern
District of Illinois (Doc. 153). In the motion, Watts
concedes that he did not, at the time the motion was filed,
have sufficient information regarding jury selection in this
district to fully support his motion. The Government
responded to the motion (Doc. 194) arguing that it is
premature since Watts did not have sufficient information at
the time to properly support his motion, and that even if it
were not premature, it has no merit. Watts has replied to
that response (Doc. 204) arguing that his motion was not
premature but must have been filed when it was to comply with
the scheduling order set by the Court. The parties agreed it
would be helpful to set new deadlines for additional briefing
on the motion.

In an
order dated November 21, 2016 (Doc. 455), the Court noted
that Watts was provided with jury selection disclosures from
the Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1867(f) in late
January 2016. Thus, Watts had ample time to review those
disclosures and had sufficient information to support his
challenge to the grand jury that indicted him. The Court
therefore gave Watts until December 16, 2016, to file a
supplement to his motion that would include all arguments he
wished to pursue in this motion. The Court reserved ruling on
Watts's motion pending the supplemental briefing.

Watts
did not file any supplement to his motion, [1] so the Court now
considers it based solely on the originally filed motion and
its subsequent briefing.

I.
Background

Watts
has been charged in this case in a two-count Indictment (Doc.
15). Count 1 charges Watts with the May 15, 2014, attempted
armed bank robbery of the First National Bank in Cairo,
Illinois, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a), (d) and
(e). The Indictment further alleges that in attempting to rob
the bank Watts used dangerous weapons to assault or put in
jeopardy the life of another person and, in fact, killed
Anita Grace and Nita Smith. Count 2 charges Watts with
possessing a firearm as a felon. The offenses charged in the
Indictment were alleged to have occurred in Alexander County,
which is within the Southern District of Illinois.
Watts's trial will take place at the federal courthouse
in Benton, Illinois.

Because
the indictment alleges that death resulted from the attempted
bank robbery, the possible penalty should Watts be convicted
of Count 1 is death or life imprisonment. See 18
U.S.C. § 2113(e). The Government seeks the death penalty
under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, 18 U.S.C.
§§ 3591-98, and accordingly, pursuant to §
3593(a), has filed a Notice of Intent to Seek the Death
Penalty (Doc. 92).

Watts's
motion challenges the selection of the grand jury that
returned the Indictment. That grand jury was selected
pursuant to the Court's Plan for the Random Selection of
Jurors (Revised November 2011) (“2011 Jury
Plan”). The grand jury selection process began when the
2013 Benton Master Jury Wheel was filled according to the
2011 Jury Plan. Pursuant to the 2011 Jury Plan, individuals
comprising the Benton Master Jury Wheel were randomly
selected from general election voter registration lists and
lists of licensed drivers eighteen years or older
(“source lists”) covering twenty-seven counties
in the Southern District of Illinois (the “Benton
Division”). 2011 Jury Plan at 2-4. A number of randomly
selected individuals from the 2013 Benton Master Jury Wheel
completed juror qualification questionnaires. 2011 Jury Plan
at 4-5. From those deemed qualified - that is, not
unqualified, exempt or excused on request - the grand jury
venire was summoned and the grand jury panel was selected in
August 2013. 2011 Jury Plan at 5-7.

II.
Analysis

In his
motion to dismiss the Indictment, Watts argues that
African-Americans are underrepresented in the pool of
qualified jurors in the Southern District of Illinois and
that, as a consequence, the grand jury that indicted him was
not selected from a fair cross-section of the community. He
speculates that the disparity between percentage of
African-Americans in the grand jury venire and the percentage
of African-Americans living within the Southern District of
Illinois, which he estimates at 5.87%, or African-Americans
living within the Benton Division, which he estimates at
5.7%, may exceed 10%. That is the threshold level necessary
to establish a prima facie case of intentional
discrimination. He speculates that there may be other flaws
with the selection of his grand jury but required disclosure
of more information before fleshing out his arguments: (1)
that the 2011 Jury Plan does not comply with the Voter Rights
Act, 52 U.S.C. § 10301, (2) that the juror source lists
are not sufficiently up to date, (3) that the grand jury may
have been impermissibly selected from the entire district
rather than the Benton Division as called for in the 2011
Jury Plan, and (4) that the Court did not supplement voter
lists with driver's license lists when selecting the 2013
Benton Master Jury Wheel.

In an
order dated December 8, 2016 (Doc. 461), the Court set forth
the relevant statutory and constitutional law regarding
challenges to the requirement that a jury be selected from a
fair cross-section of the community. In that order, the Court
noted that challenges brought under the Jury Selection and
Service Act of 1968, 28 U.S.C. § 1861 et seq.,
must be accompanied by “a sworn statement of facts
which, if true, would constitute a substantial failure to
comply with the provisions of this title.” 28 U.S.C.
§ 1867(c). The motion denied in the December 8, 2016,
order was not accompanied by the required sworn statement of
facts, so the Court rejected the statutory challenge. The
pending motion is similarly deficient, so the Court rejects
it as well to the extent it makes a statutory challenge.

In its
December 8, 2016, order, the Court further noted the
requirements to establish a prima facie case for a
constitutional fair cross-section challenge as set forth in
Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 364 (1979). It
found that Watts had failed to establish the second element -
that the representation of African-Americans in the jury pool
is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of
African-Americans in the community - because he did not point
to an absolute disparity of greater than 10%. It further
rejected an alternate measure of assessing the disparity, the
comparative disparity. As for the pending motion, it would be
impossible for there to be an absolute disparity of more than
10% because the percentage of the population that is
African-American is only approximately 6% according to
Watts's figures; the greatest absolute disparity possible
is therefore approximately 6%. That is insufficient to
establish a prima facie case for a constitutional
fair cross-section challenge.

The
Court further found in its December 8, 2016, order that Watts
had failed to make any showing of the third Duren
element - systematic exclusion of African-Americans from the
jury selection process. Similarly, the arguments he makes in
his pending motion in support of systematic exclusion are
unsupported and speculative.

In sum,
Watts's theories for why his grand jury venire did not
represent a fair cross-section of the community or why the
Court has not complied with the 2011 Jury Plan ...

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